“As a fast-growing domestic and international carrier, Hainan
Airlines is demonstrating our environmental commitment by showing
that aviation biofuel can play a safe and effective role in
China's air transport system,” said Pu Ming, vice president
of Hainan Airlines, who personally piloted the plane, which
carried more than 100 passengers from Shanghai to Beijing.

The Boeing 737 Next Generation was propelled by 50 percent
biofuel and 50 percent conventional jet fuel. Biofuel produces up
to an 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions than traditional
kerosene used to power airplanes.

“We thank and congratulate our partners, whose teamwork,
vision and commitment to sustainable aviation are helping to
improve our industry and our environment for the long term,”
said Ian Thomas, president, Boeing China.

China is already the world’s second biggest air travel market,
behind the US, and is expected to grow rapidly in the coming
years, with Boeing estimating that the country will need more
than 6,000 new planes – at a cost of more than $800 billion – in
the next two decades.

The first commercial flight powered by cooking oil was performed
by KLM in 2011. Although both airlines and regulators have set
targets to increase the use of biofuel, it remains a marginal
alternative, largely due to the cost of gathering and refining
used oil, which makes the resulting up to three times more
expensive than kerosene. It is also more prone to gelling at low
temperatures, making it less reliable than traditional fuel. Only
1,500 flights using a biofuel mixture have been made since 2011 –
a tiny proportion of the average 100,000 flights that take place
each day.

But even if the everyday use of cooking oil for air travel
remains some decades off, the flight had a symbolic resonance in
China. The use of gutter oil is one of the biggest public safety
concerns in the country. Instead of being recycled, or reused
only for industrial purposes, used cooking oil in China is often
collected (sometimes from an actual gutter) reprocessed and sold
back to food vendors, who use it to fry food for their customers,
despite its toxicity and potential for contamination.

As it is visually indistinguishable from normal cooking oil,
consumers have no way to ensure their safety, and multiple news
reports and documentaries have showcased horror stories of
customers suffering poisoning and longer-term effects, including
cancer.

Finding other uses for gutter oil, which would make it less
lucrative to sell it for human consumption has been a priority
for the government, unable to cope with the unregulated market.

Boeing and state-owned manufacturer Commercial Airplane Corp. of
China have set up a pilot facility that converts about 650 liters
of cooking oil into biofuel each day, and say that eventually 1.8
billion liters of biofuel could be produced in the country each
year.

But some remain skeptical.

“While used cooking oil can be a good alternative to
conventional fossil fuels from a climate perspective, there is a
real question of scale and price,” Nusa Urbancic, Programme
Manager Energy at Transport & Environment, an NGO, told
Euractiv, a news portal.

“People will have to eat a lot of greasy food to fuel even
one trans-continental flight.”